RNA-seq Analysis of mRNA profiles in β-Gal-overexpressing, and HuR-overexpressing primary hepatocytes

Purpose: The goal of this study is to investigate how HuR regulates hepatocyte death. Methods: mRNA profiles of β-Gal-overexpressing, and HuR-overexpressing primary hepatocytes were generated by deep sequencing using an Illumina HiseqX platform. Paired-end clean reads were aligned to the mouse reference genome(Ensemble_GRCm38.83) with TopHat (version 2.0.12), and the aligned reads were used to quantify mRNA expression by using HTSeq-count (version 0.6.1). Conclusion: Our study represents the first detailed analysis of mRNA profiles in HuR-overexpressing primary hepatocytes, generated by RNA-seq technology. Our results show that 258 genes were upregulated and 357 genes were downregulated following HuR overexpression. GO analysis indicated that the upregulated genes were primarily related to cell death, death, apoptotic process, programmed cell death and intrinsic apoptotic signaling pathway. These data indicate that upregulation of HuR leads to hepatocyte death. mRNA profiles in β-Gal-overexpressing, and HuR-overexpressing primary hepatocytes were generated by deep sequencing, in a single test, using Illumina HiseqX platform.